Bit weird to see a review of iOS that doesn't acknowledge that you still can't send an email with two different types of files attached as a problem.

Nor does it address the fact that the OS still constantly directs you to it's own maps app, which is still unusable dross in most parts of the world, as you can't change default apps. Apple Maps is so bad it drags down the entire OS.

Slow running animations are a crasser form-over-function faux-pas than skeumorphism in my view. And Windows Phone has them too.

The worst example though is in OSX, the animations to transition into full-screen and switch between full-screen apps. There are hacky ways to speed them up, and even then they are still too slow, but the default speed is ridiculous.

Must be torture for the engineering nerds to have some "humanities" person come in and force them to roll animations at suboptimal speeds.

Hate to be 'that guy', but specifically calling out an OS review as 'thorough', I might expect some words toward particularly interesting new API features that should lead to some nice new apps. As usual, there were hundreds (thousands?) added that don't exactly lend themselves to screenshots but are very much a part of the OS and incoming experience.

Slow running animations are a crasser form-over-function faux-pas than skeumorphism in my view. And Windows Phone has them too.

The worst example though is in OSX, the animations to transition into full-screen and switch between full-screen apps. There are hacky ways to speed them up, and even then they are still too slow, but the default speed is ridiculous.

Must be torture for the engineering nerds to have some "humanities" person come in and force them to roll animations at suboptimal speeds.

one i really hate is the quicktime movie to fullscreen. should be instant like it was in the past.animation isn't even good the first time around.

Bit weird to see a review of iOS that doesn't acknowledge that you still can't send an email with two different types of files attached as a problem.

Nor does it address the fact that the OS still constantly directs you to it's own maps app, which is still unusable dross in most parts of the world, as you can't change default apps. Apple Maps is so bad it drags down the entire OS.

Just had to check this out myself: I can get for example a V-Card for a contact and a separate picture from photos into the mail, so your claim of "still can't send an email with two different types of files attached" is simply wrong.

Maps really is hit and miss. I've seen huge progress here in Berlin (when the new Maps were introduced no 3D flyover, wrong streets and parts were black and white) but since it is the capital of Germany it was to be expected.

So far I really like the design. Have been running the Beta version for over a month now and the GM feels very polished. I just hope that third party apps pick up the new styling sooner rather then later. iOS7 runs well on my iPhone 4S. One thing I was hoping for is a switch in the control center (or Siri) to turn on/off 3G. I usually keep 3G off, since Edge is plenty fast enough for loading some mobile optimized webpages/chatting/mailing but occasionally I need the speed up, so an easy switch would have been preferable.

Also I'm really glad there are new system sounds. In fact every time I here the standard three tone signal now from messages around me I feel very annoyed.

Performance on my iphone 4 seems the same as V6. I haven't tried running Pandora/Waze in my car yet. That's usually the biggest CPU suck I notice. I plan on upgrading to 5s anyway, so not a big deal.

Like some cars, it looks way better in person than in photos. I don't have a colorful background and a lot of the colorful default icons are nested in folders, so it's not the pastel wonderland seen in screenshots.

The dual-keyboard thing is a little wonky though. I guess there's a new keyboard API and the old one is deprecated? I'd like that explained a little more.

Nor does it address the fact that the OS still constantly directs you to it's own maps app, which is still unusable dross in most parts of the world, as you can't change default apps. Apple Maps is so bad it drags down the entire OS.

Hate to be 'that guy', but specifically calling out an OS review as 'thorough', I might expect some words toward particularly interesting new API features that should lead to some nice new apps. As usual, there were hundreds (thousands?) added that don't exactly lend themselves to screenshots but are very much a part of the OS and incoming experience.

I'll be hitting some of the API stuff in another piece later on. I wanted to keep this one consumer-focused and obviously it was running a little long. :-)

Apple’s own promo page for iOS 7 shows how the company feels about this sort of thing in the post-Forstall era: “The [iOS 7] interface is purposely unobtrusive,” it reads. “Conspicuous ornamentation has been stripped away. Unnecessary bars and buttons have been removed. And in taking away design elements that don’t add value, suddenly there’s greater focus on what matters most: your content.”

Sounds like a word for word copy of Microsoft's 'Content First' design principles of the Windows 8 Metro app user interfaces from the Build 2012 presentations. Most of the UI controls look like they have been ripped straight from Windows Phone 8.

But since this Apple we can expect everyone to gasp in awe and marvel at it's ingenuity.

I know it's a matter of personal taste, but there are loads of things I just don't really like in iOS 7. There's the fruit salad look and colored pieces of text everywhere (which seem needed to make up for the total lack of shapes and actual buttons), there's the transparency that just looks hideous depending on your background pictures, there's all the diluted fluffiness in the notification center with bland paragraphs of half-witty text instead of just a concise list of events, dates and times (I REALLY prefer seeing no event listed instead of having to read "your afternoon seems to be clear"), spreading all this now over three tabs instead one list...

And in spotlight the Google and Wikipedia search options are gone.

Apart from the control center there's nothing I want to have (and this I had since years with a jailbreak mod). Even the new multitasking switcher seems just slower than before and I can recognize apps to switch to much easier by their icons (which I tapped on to launch the app in the first place anyway) than by a screenshot of the content they happen to show.

This is the first time I won't update. I will run my iPhone 4 on 6.x until I get a new phone later on and it looks very much as if this won't be an iPhone. I'm actually sad about this but there's really nothing that would make me want to have iOS 7.

And there's STILL no document manager of any sort and no way to change default apps. You still have to hand around copies of files between apps and if you prefer Chrome over Safari you still end up in Safari when opening a website from within an app.

The only hiccup is that it only works with iDevices that support dual-band 802.11n, which cuts out the iPhone 4 and 4S and the iPad 2.

I believe this is incorrect. AirDrop requires ad-hoc peer-to-peer wi-fi support (Wi-Fi Direct?) and as such, the 3rd gen iPad is also excluded from what I've read on both Apple's site and your list of features by device near the top of the article.

Apple’s own promo page for iOS 7 shows how the company feels about this sort of thing in the post-Forstall era: “The [iOS 7] interface is purposely unobtrusive,” it reads. “Conspicuous ornamentation has been stripped away. Unnecessary bars and buttons have been removed. And in taking away design elements that don’t add value, suddenly there’s greater focus on what matters most: your content.”

Sounds like a word for word copy of Microsoft's 'Content First' design principles of the Windows 8 Metro app user interfaces from the Build 2012 presentations. Most of the UI controls look like they have been ripped straight from Windows Phone 8.

But since this Apple we can expect everyone to gasp in awe and marvel at it's ingenuity.

In fairness, Apple isn't trying to shoehorn iOS 7 onto their Macs, expecting the touch interface to work equally well with fingers as with a mouse. Most criticism of Metro seems to be that it sucks on a desktop/laptop, not that it is bad per se.

The only hiccup is that it only works with iDevices that support dual-band 802.11n, which cuts out the iPhone 4 and 4S and the iPad 2.

I believe this is incorrect. AirDrop requires ad-hoc peer-to-peer wi-fi support (Wi-Fi Direct?) and as such, the 3rd gen iPad is also excluded from what I've read on both Apple's site and your list of features by device near the top of the article.

Slow running animations are a crasser form-over-function faux-pas than skeumorphism in my view. And Windows Phone has them too.

The worst example though is in OSX, the animations to transition into full-screen and switch between full-screen apps. There are hacky ways to speed them up, and even then they are still too slow, but the default speed is ridiculous.

Must be torture for the engineering nerds to have some "humanities" person come in and force them to roll animations at suboptimal speeds.

I don't think Apple relied heavily on human-user-interface designers for this one. If those folks got their say, then a lot of changed wouldn't have occurred, b/c they break usability standards.

Instead, I think Apple let their liberal arts team go ape-shit with everything to try to make it "cool and chic and hip" or whatever.

At least usability experts (which have degrees that are a cross between psychology and comp sci) can give good, logical, scientifically-researched reasons why programmers need to change something. The liberal arts majors will just tell programmers to change it "b/c it looks cooler this way!" (which is just bullshit opinion).

Apple needs to get their liberal arts dept back on it's leash, and stop letting it dictate the direction of ... everything. Apples' a tech company, not an art company. I would rather see an ugly interface that is very usable than a nice looking interface that's a PITA.

Slow running animations are a crasser form-over-function faux-pas than skeumorphism in my view. And Windows Phone has them too.

The worst example though is in OSX, the animations to transition into full-screen and switch between full-screen apps. There are hacky ways to speed them up, and even then they are still too slow, but the default speed is ridiculous.

Must be torture for the engineering nerds to have some "humanities" person come in and force them to roll animations at suboptimal speeds.

I don't think Apple relied heavily on human-user-interface designers for this one. If those folks got their say, then a lot of changed wouldn't have occurred, b/c they break usability standards.

Instead, I think Apple let their liberal arts team go ape-shit with everything to try to make it "cool and chic and hip" or whatever.

At least usability experts (which have degrees that are a cross between psychology and comp sci) can give good, logical, scientifically-researched reasons why programmers need to change something. The liberal arts majors will just tell programmers to change it "b/c it looks cooler this way!" (which is just bullshit opinion).

Apple needs to get their liberal arts dept back on it's leash, and stop letting it dictate the direction of ... everything. Apples' a tech company, not an art company. I would rather see an ugly interface that is very usable than a nice looking interface that's a PITA.

Apple has always been inspired by art, their designs are usually considered artistic and elegant compared to the competition.

Contrary to what you're saying, sometimes you just gotta break things in order to improve them. That's been another philosophy at Apple.

Great write-up! You have a gift in doing this stuff, and I enjoy reading what you write. This is very informative, and is the perfect piece to help me in my decision to upgrade or not.What frame rate do you shoot your videos? They are live-looking, and show the animations in real-life. Thanks for this! Great job!

I was really hoping the animations would be sped up. Their low speed was a constant aggravation during the beta period. They placated people a bit when they mitigated the annoyance of the initial unlock animation by allowing you to tap icons before the animation had ended. It was downright painful waiting for this extremely lengthy animation to end before you could tap the icon you wanted to launch.

Unfortunately there are still a lot of areas where it hasn't been fixed. The most annoying for me is in control center. On android I ran CM and tweaked the unlock slider to let me go directly into calculator and toggle the flashlight (depending on which way I swiped). It was awesome to see Apple add exactly those to shortcuts to control center. Unfortunately, the idea of quickly accessing key functions is hampered by the fact that the icons are unresponsive until control center has entirely completed its animation, including the slight bounceback effect at the top. To put into perspective how slow it is, I sometimes tap on the flashlight or calculator 3 times before it registers my tap - the previous taps ignored as the animation was still ongoing. The share menu is another annoying example; when you swipe to select your sharing method you need to wait for the animation to fully complete (including bounceback) before you can tap on whatever you want to share with.

I wouldn't mind the animations as much if the UI elements weren't completely locked out during those animations.